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I have a little problem. I'm addicted to cookbooks, food writing, recipe collecting, and cooking. I have a lot of recipes waiting for me to try them, and ideas from articles, tv, and restaurants often lead to new dishes. I started losing track of what I've done. So now I'm taking photos and writing about what I've prepared—unless it's terrible in which case I forget it ever happened.

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Friday, October 7, 2011

A first flip through a cookbook always ends with those several pages that get marked because of great-looking things that I intend to make right away. Then, reality happens, and I might not get back to those marked pages for weeks or maybe months. These cookies were on one of those marked pages in Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich. I’ve bakeda fewother things from the book, but I only recently made my way back to this page. I was looking for a birthday cookie for my sister, and I remembered these fruit-filled squares. This is the first cookie of the Chewy category, but they’re a little bit crispy too. It’s an interesting cookie technique and one I hadn’t tried before. Basically, they’re made from two layers of pastry with dried fruit in the middle and a coarse sugar topping. As they bake, the top layer of pastry settles around the bits of fruit and makes a pebbly-looking surface. Once cool, they’re crisp and firm enough to pack and ship without fear of them crumbling. Another great thing about these cookies is the possibility of infinite flavor variations. I went with lemon zest in the dough and a filling of dried cranberries, but other suggestions include cinnamon or anise in the dough and dried fruit like golden or dark raisins, apricots, dates, cherries, candied ginger, or any combination of those.

Starting the dough is the standard cookie procedure of creaming butter and sugar and adding an egg and vanilla. Next, you add the flavor component of choice which was lemon zest for me, but it’s noted in the recipe that anise smells lovely in the dough as it bakes. Then, the dry ingredients of flour, baking powder, and salt were added and mixed to combine. The dough was divided in half, each half was pressed into a round, and the rounds were wrapped in plastic and chilled for a few hours. Once chilled, one piece of dough at a time was rolled in between sheets of parchment paper into a big rectangle. The dough does become a little sticky as it comes up in temperature, so the parchment makes it much easier to roll without excess flour. To fill, the top piece of parchment was removed, dried cranberries were strewn about on the bottom half of the rectangle of dough, and the top half of dough was folded over the bottom. The top was then sprinkled with turbinado sugar, the edges were trimmed, and squares were cut. The process was repeated with the second piece of dough, and the squares baked for about 15 minutes.

For a brief moment, it seemed like rolling the dough and folding and cutting was going to be complicated, but it was actually pretty simple. The squares were cut and ready to bake in no time. I’m already thinking about flavors to try next time. It might be cinnamon in the dough and dried apricots and candied ginger for the filling. With crunchy pastry layers and a chewy fruit filling, these are worth trying in every flavor combination you can imagine.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who does this with cookbooks..I really do have such good intentions! I'm fairly certain I bookmarked these in Medrich's book also...thanks for reminding me that they exist!

The other day, I unpacked a box of cookbooks and there were about 10 copies of this book. I immediately put it on my "Dana Wants" list. For reasons like this one! What a perfect cookie. Pretty and tasty.

This is one that is in my library of cookbooks that I have yet to make. I am always interested in cookies that ship and travel well due to my monthly donations, so this has inspired. Great timing also with the cranberries.

Ooh these guys are cute. I haven't tried anything like this before. They look like they're fun to make too. I want to say I am going to try these asap but I have that same issue with page folding and bookmarking recipes. I think my list is somewhere in the 1000s.

I recently attended a cooking class with Alice Medrich. What a great baker! The Chocolate Cream Pie she prepared was intoxicating! Can't wait to try this cookie recipe as a welcome to fall baking with seasonal cranberries.

Lisa, what an interesting way for cookies, and they sure look great...love the the pictures! Love the idea of "sandwiching" the dry fruits.Hope you are having a great week and thanks for this fantastic recipe :-)